Carbon credits, built for business: Our €5M seed round

We raised €5 million in seed funding to make carbon credits work for real companies and the real challenges they face. Alven and Racine², an impact-focused fund managed by Serena and Makesense, led the oversubscribed round, with continued support from SpeedInvest (who led our pre-seed round) and newcomer Kfund. 

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Our pre-seed funding enabled us to build our product, establish the Riverse Standard, and launch operations. This seed funding aims to scale the platform and solution we built—and scale is exactly what the carbon market needs. 

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The carbon market paradox

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The carbon market today faces a fundamental disconnect. Companies want trustworthy, high-integrity carbon credits, but struggle to find options that connect meaningfully to their day-to-day operations. They want relevant credits—projects in their geography, industry, or value chain. 

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To be clear, scientific rigor and trust form the foundation of our business (and the carbon credit industry). 

We are fully ICROA-endorsed and have built a world-class in-house science team, supported by leading independent market experts and scientists. Our platform integrates models aligned with ISO 14064-2 standards, which are continuously improved using real-world data gathered from our certified projects—over 60 to date, with more than 2,000 data points collected so far. Every project's data is transparently accessible through our registry. (This blog post details what we mean by mean by “high quality and trustworthy credits.”)

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But integrity isn’t enough. There are not enough buyers in the market. And what we’ve seen since starting Riverse in 2021 is that many companies hesitate to buy because they want trustworthy and relevant credits. We believe that the carbon credit market will scale faster if we deliver both. 

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Trustworthy  relevant credits

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Riverse is a carbon crediting standard and platform for engineered projects. We support a spectrum of avoidance and removal projects, from IT refurbishment and biobased construction materials to enhanced rock weathering and biomass carbon removal. The common denominator across them is technology: all credits are measured and verified through precise, auditable industrial data, all of which is accessible on our registry.

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Our approach is built on a few key pillars:

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• Scientific integrity: Our methodologies rely on robust quantification, conservative baselines, risk buffers, permanent monitoring, and third-party validation. Credits are high-quality and trustworthy.
• Business relevance: We connect companies with carbon projects in their geography, industry, and value chain, tying climate action directly to operations.
• Field engineering expertise: We understand both the science of carbon flows and the practical realities of data collection in industrial settings.
• Hands-on partnership: The market is young and changing rapidly, with regulations, methodologies, technologies, and company commitments in a constant state of flux. We’re agile and work in tandem with buyers, developers and regulators to adapt quickly and efficiently.

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This approach has helped us:

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• Receive full ICROA endorsement—the first organization to do so under its rigorous new assessment procedure.  ICROA is the industry’s de facto beacon of quality assurance, and their validation underscores the integrity and transparency of the Riverse Standard.
• Validate 60+ projects and issue 250,000+ carbon credits—engineered solutions that vary from industrial decarbonization to carbon removal technologies.
• Partner with industry leaders and top-tier corporate buyers—including key players like Patch, EcoAct, Southpole, CEEZER, Removall, and Carbonapp, and forward-thinking corporates like BNP Paribas, Mirakl, EDF and Engie.
• Run a faster, more efficient certification process—typically under 3 months. Our platform uses field data, modular models, and third-party audits to streamline workflows, enhance accuracy, and reduce manual work.

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What's been most rewarding is seeing how companies choose Riverse to connect their carbon credits to their value chains:

• BNP Paribas’ carbon trading desk onboarded Riverse as part of its carbon product offering and solutions
• Quito/ECS Group, a major player in airport logistics, has made a multi-year commitment to purchase credits from Ecodair, a social enterprise specializing in IT refurbishment.
• AG, a large Belgian real estate and insurance group, purchased biobased construction material removal credits from IsoHemp, a Belgian hemp concrete block manufacturer.

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Evolving the market

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As regulatory frameworks solidify and corporate climate commitments face greater scrutiny, the need for carbon credits that connect meaningfully to business operations will only grow. 

We knew when we started Riverse that we were taking on an uphill battle to fundamentally change a complex market. We did it because we believed this market is crucial—and that we could make it better.

Three years later, scaling climate solutions has become more essential than ever. Our impact is real, and the conviction that got us started has only deepened. With the right partners, companies, and advisors by our side, we’re entering a new chapter—scaling Riverse to deliver climate impact where it matters most.

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